Seminar Announcement:：Towards Economical and Sustainable Production of Wood Based Nanomaterials

Published on:2017-09-06 Visits:124

Title：Towards Economical and Sustainable
Production of Wood Based Nanomaterials

Time : September 9,
2017 10:30 am

Location: Biofuels
Institute Conference Room, Jiangsu University

About
the Speaker:

Dr.
J.Y. Zhu is a scientific team leader at the US Forest Service, Forest Products
Laboratory, Madison, Wisconsin. He was the Inaugural Fulbright-Aalto University
Distinguished Chair in Energy and Sustainable Use of Natural Resources
(2015-2016 academic year), Helsinki, Finland. He holds an Adjunct Appointment
at the Dept. of Biological Systems Engineering, University of
Wisconsin-Madison. His research covers a broad area of wood and fiber
utilization from wood pulping, fiber physics, bioenergy and biofuels, to
cellulose nanomaterials that encompassed from laboratory studies to commercial
scale demonstrations. The SPORL process his group developed was used for the
world FIRST successful woody cellulosic bio-jet (from forest residue)
commercial flight from US west coast (Seattle) to east coast (Washington DC) on
November 14, 2016. Dr. Zhu’s achievements were honored with AIChE (American
Institute of Chemical Engineers) Andrew Chase Award in 2016, TAPPI (Technical
Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry) International R&D Technical
Award and William Aiken Prize in 2014, and US Forest Service Deputy Chief for
R&D Distinguished Science Award in 2013.Dr. Zhu is a Fellow of TAPPI, AIChE, and IAWS (International Academy of
Wood Science).

Lignocellulose
based nanomaterials such as cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) have attracted great
interest recently due to renewability, biodegradability, and other unique
mechanical and optical properties with a potential to produce a variety of
products for a sustainable future. Achieving economic and environmentally
sustainable production, however, is the key to commercial success.

In this
presentation, I will outline the current status of cellulose nanomaterial
production including the deficiencies of existing technologies. Then, I would
like to discuss some of our research on integrated production of cellulose
nanocrystals (CNC) and fibrils (CNF) with full recovery of chemicals.
Specifically I will present our recent study using dicarboxylic acids (DCAs) for
sustainable and potentially economical production of highly thermal stable and
functional (carboxylated) cellulose nanomaterials.Finally, I will briefly discuss our progress
in producing lignin containing cellulose nanomaterials and lignin nanoparticles
(LNP). Specifically, I will present a low temperature ( ≤ 80 °C) and low energy
wood fractionation process for producing lignin CNF (LCNF) and LNP, rather than
from chemical pulps, to substantially reduce production cost.